Summer in the Pines
by sastars429
Summary: Keegan never could quite catch a break, and she knew this for certain when she saw her horrid yellow and brown suitcase plummet off the side of a bus. Now, stranded in Gravity Falls, she's got to make the best of what she gets, even if it's not much.


**Hello everybody! I absolutely love Gravity Falls, and I thought I'd hop on the fanfiction bandwagon. I have a lot of fun writing this kind of weird stuff, and I'm hoping to make a pretty decent story out of it.**

**So there is an OC in this, but I don't really plan on anything happening unless things get that way. **

**Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls.**

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Summer in the Pines

"Mail-Order Penguin"

"So where you headed from?" Al asked, as he shifted the bus into fifth gear. Keegan clutched her seat tightly to hold her balance as they rounded another sharp turn at top speed. She held onto her backpack tightly, if she was going to hurl she might at least try and keep it contained.

"New York City, and are you sure this is safe?" Keegan asked, holding down barf as she peeked out of the nearest window. On either side of the rickety old bus there were only a couple of inches between the road and a steep plummet to the bottom of a gorge.

"Oh yeah, thanks for remindin' me, I nearly forgot about all these darned speed – blast it!" She held for dear life as Al charged full-speed into a speed bump. She grasped her seat cushion as she felt the bus leave the ground. She quickly covered her head and barely heard a dreadful _thump_ over the unholy racket the bus was making.

Keegan managed to gain her bearings long enough to see her horribly ugly brown and yellow suitcase tumble off the roof of the bus and then fall to its death in the canyon.

From the way the Al had been driving the hell-bound tourist bus, she suspected that the man didn't even have the ability to downshift. For the past four hours the man had been driving like a madman, trying to get to the coast of Oregon where he would drop her off at her aunt and uncle's house. However, the second that her suitcase tumbled off the top Al stopped on a dime.

"Was that your suitcase?" He asked, ignoring the car that had stopped behind him.

"Yeah," Keegan responded, trying to hold her shock inside. "It had all of my money in…" But she didn't have time to finish her sentence before Al snapped open the door and instructed her to get off.

"This is as far as you go, Keegan. I can't give no rides for free now." She sighed and got off the bus. Once on the ground she turned around to face the Al, who was getting ready to take off.

"Where are we, Al?" She asked the crazed bus driver, looking around at the dead town. It looked absolutely terrifying. Everything from the vast woods to the faint sign that read _The Mystery Shack _in the far distance horrified her city eyes.

_Mystery Shack? _She wondered to herself. _What is that even supposed to mean? _It sounded like the name of something in those horror movies her friends and she used to watch.

"This here is Gravity Falls," Al said, closing the bus door and snapping Keegan back from her thoughts. "Now you be careful, Keegan, they don't like you city boys much around here." He called through the window as he drove by.

She tried to shout back that she was a girl, but Al was already too far away to hear her. She sighed and drug her feet forward, away from the road. She thoroughly blamed her mother for the gender confusion. Her mother had taken her into the hair salon and requested a 'pixie' cut, claiming that it would be cute and hip. Both Keegan _and _the stylist tried to explain to her mother that Keegan had too much of a caveman brow bone to pull it off, but her mother wasn't having any of it. Since then, as far as society was concerned, Keegan was a boy.

"My name certainly doesn't help much." She grumbled, looking around.

"And what would that name be, city boy?" A sarcastic voice asked from behind her. She turned around to see two cops, one slightly rotund, laughing and giggling as if they'd just made the most hilarious joke ever told.

"Excuse me," Keegan said, trying to be polite, "But I seem to be lost, could you help me out?"

"Look at the city boy!" The thinner of the two men shouted. "Lost because all you see are trees? None of your skyscrapers around here, city boy!"

"No, I'm lost because I just got kicked off of my bus!" She yelled back. "Now do you think you could help me back home or something?"

"Unsolvable!" The more rotund man proclaimed, turning around. "Now, Deputy Durland, I say we go get lunch."

"Why, Sheriff Blubs, that sounds like a grand idea!" The leaner man replied, and together they both turned around and headed for a squad car.

"Excuse me you two, but do you have a phone I could use?" She cried to the two men, but they were suddenly distracted by their walkie-talkies.

"Attention all officers, Ranger McGunkin's mail-order penguin just arrived." A man's voice came through the receiver.

"Get in the car Durland; it's a 7-41!" Blubs called to his deputy, and they both launched themselves in the car and sped away before Keegan could ask them anything else.

She sighed to herself and located the Sheriff's station to her right. She climbed the splintering wooden steps and opened the screen door. When she found the phone she quickly dialed her mom's number.

"Hey honey," her mother's over-the-top, sugary-sweet voice filled the line, "How are you enjoying all of that fresh air?"

"I'm pretty sure it's filled with poison-ivy spores." Keegan complained.

"Oh, honey, don't be a Debbie-Downer! Remember what I told you, your father was going to marry a Debbie, but then I showed up! If you want to bag the rich ones, you're going to have to be a bit more like me!"

"Mom, Al threw me off his bus." She stated, trying to be quick to get off the topic of marriage. "I'm stranded in some town named Gravity Falls." Keegan explained further. She held her breath, hoping that her mother might actually have a reliable solution, other than telling her some stupid saying she got out of _Knowing Your Difficult Teen_.

"You know what I always say honey, if you can't be in the show, be in the audience!" Her mother said cheerily over the phone. "Looks like you'll just have to figure something out while you're there!"

"What's that even supposed to mean, mom?" She asked, hoping that her mother wasn't implying that she fend for herself.

"Well I'll put two hundred dollars into your account, and make-do with it! It'd really help if you were to get a job, honey. Don't worry; they don't have child labor laws out there!" And then the line went dead. Keegan slumped against the wall, wondering how in the world she was going to take care of herself. She was only thirteen years old, and only two hundred dollars to survive three months.

She sighed and straightened up. She decided that she couldn't waste time, if she was going to have to survive here, then she'd have to survive. She never let herself get defeated, not even that one time when a creepy guy in the subway offered her his pants. _Not. Even. Then._

Keegan moved toward the door, but it suddenly flew open and a dozen cops ran in. They were all screaming, shouting, and clutching their faces as if they'd just been attacked.

"What is going on around here?" She shouted over their ruckus.

"The penguin!" They all shouted in unison. "It's gone _rogue._" They all immediately scampered under their desks to hide away from a danger that she couldn't possibly imagine. But, she didn't really care either.

She sighed and walked out of the office, deciding that it was incredibly uncool to cower like a bunch of idiots. When she walked outside she noticed the sky had gotten a little darker. It didn't take a genius to know that night was coming soon.

"Hello," a voice greeted her as she was leaving the sheriff's office. Keegan looked around, but didn't see anyone. "Down here." The voice clarified.

"Oh," Keegan gasped, shocked by the absolutely, positively adorable kid at her feet. "Who are you?"

"I hold the answer to everything you need!" The child explained, fluffing his white hair.

"W-who are you?" she asked, stunned by the child's words.

"My name is Gideon, Lil' Gideon," the boy clarified again, "And I am a psychic." He proclaimed, puffing his chest out.

"Hi Lil' Gideon," she greeted, "I'm Keegan."

"I already knew that, Keegan," Gideon smiled, "And I'm here to offer you a job."

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Mabel Pines was sitting on the porch, reading another one of her tween novels, when she heard a crunching of twigs. She looked up, thinking that Dipper was finally back from his forest excursion, to see a giant, Grunkle Stan sized penguin.

"Hi there!" She waved at the penguin. "Aren't you a cutie?"

The penguin cocked its head to the side and analyzed her. It stood incredibly still for almost a minute, made its decision, and charged head-on toward Mabel.

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**I hoped you enjoyed! I'll be sure to post more soon.**

**Please review! It means a ton!**


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